ASAW 2020 Recap
Written by the AUREA Team
Word count: 1168
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
It is an indisputable fact that aros aren’t celebrated nearly enough. We deserve more, and we deserve it all! Fortunately, this year’s Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week had us soaring in the right direction. Each time this week comes around our information spreads further and the party only gets better. There was a significant amount of participation this February and we’re going to attempt to record it all!
Aro meetups are becoming more and more common these days. We’d like to thank all the aros out there who are out community building on the ground. For ASAW, we saw some special events. In Milan, Italy, the Arcigay youth group hosted an aromantic meet up. Rat & Tat, a queer advocacy group centred in Bremen, Germany, held a cozy get together. Purdue University of West Lafayette, U.S., dedicated February to ‘Love and Queerness’ - a beautiful sentiment. As a part of this motion their LGBTQ Center even hosted a workshop on Asexuality and Aromanticism! And finally Kramerbooks & Afterwords of Washington, DC, put together a lovely display of aromantic stories in their store, all of which come highly recommended.
Image provided by TAAAP: https://twitter.com/TAAAP_org/status/1229965364311855104
Much of ASAW participation happened online, which is perfect for maximum attendance! There were prompt and challenges held by the usual suspects. Aromantic Official had a prompt for each day of the week, and you can take a scroll through their ASAW tag to see what they inspired. Carnival of Aros was also involved - you can thank us for that one! - here is our round-up post of all the submissions relating to Variation vs. Unity.
A new addition to the event schedule was AroWriMo, which set the writers of our community to work. Check out their submissions for some #ourvoices content.
For a more varied look at what the community was up to unprompted, here is the ASAW tumblr tag, and on twitter we have #ASAW and #AAW.
An exciting part of ASAW is always media representation - what will we see? Who will be interviewed? Just what cool and unexpected things are out there?
We’ll kick off with a TV series that you can watch on Youtube. BIFL is a story about a cast of LGBTQ+ characters who are trying their best. There will be conversations on love (in its many forms), found family, and identity. Thrown into that wonderful mix is reportedly an aromantic bisexual man. It’s a short series that you can watch in the afternoon so be sure to check it out.
Here’s a short and sweet comic by Panda and Possum Adventures. The story centres on this furry pair and follows them on their journey of ups and downs. Panda is delightedly asexual and Possum is wonderfully pansexual - for ASAW, an aromantic swan was introduced.
As always Yasmin Benoit was highly sort after. Her interview with iNews titled: 'I'm asexual and aromantic, and I don't need to be fixed' discusses misconceptions and visibility. She’s doing a fantastic job righting those wrongs, and sharing the aromantic experience.
PinkNews, a LGBT+ news service based in the UK, asked some aros to share their experiences on a video. They each answer a few of the same questions and you can see the results here in their video: Coming out as aromantic | Everything you need to know. It's great to see so many aros! They also released an interview with two of the aros, where they talk about their unconventional, opt-in relationship.
Another aromantic person shared about her sparse dating history, as a person in her 30s who has since stopped looking for a partner. She also wonders about the future, where she could see a closer relationship with her sister.
For ASAW, the Great Ace Digital Book Box introduced us to the novel Unburied Fables, by Rachel Sharp. This anthology of fairy tales rewrites the classics with LGBTQ+ characters and a focus on subversion - no gays will be buried in this novel. There is supposed to be a significant focus on aro and ace characters throughout.
Image provided by Rose Sinclair: https://twitter.com/artoverchaos/status/1231312780776460288
Jackwood, an editorial that interviews notable people, brought us a fantastic conversation with Nik Hampshire. In his interview Nik discusses race, identity, dreams, and art. Like Yasmin, he is a black model sharing the many varied experiences of aromantics. There’s some inspiring words to be read here.
LETS FOX ABOUT IT is a news site created by, for, and about marginalized people. For ASAW they interviewed Xan West, a writer of erotica. In the interview they discuss aro stories and how they include arospec characters in their own writing. This is a fun interview that’ll introduce you to a whole new world of authors.
Scot Scoop, Carlmont High School’s online publication, put together a piece on how ‘Aromantic Awareness Week broadens the impact of Valentine’s Day’. The interviews with our fellow a-specs discuss how we can take Valentine’s Day and make it our own, or alternatively, ignore it all together. The articles, in summary, reads: whatever your preference, ASAW teaches us acceptance.
For ASAW at AUREA, we put together our own series of interviews. Here is our collection of aromantic feature articles:
My Aromantic Future - a collection of over 70 submissions from aros on the topic of their futures.
And finally, from Yasmin Benoit herself: Meet the activist who's making ground.
Alongside the goal to have aromantics placed front and centre there is a lesser goal to have us talked about casually - normally. These following articles do just that.
How Platonic Intimacy Improved Everything About My Life by Elly Belle
“Folks, is it gay to prioritize friendships over romantic relationships? People often ask me if I’m dating every friend I have. They find it strange that I can be so intimate and involved and deeply love and cherish my friends the same way someone would a romantic partner — without romantic intention.”
Should a Couple Fight in Threes? by Sarah Miller
“Keeping fights with a partner private can give privilege a dark, warm place to grow.”
An Account of the Violence of Heterosexual Marriage Identity-Making by Kneo Mokgopa
“Instead of arguing for queers’ social validity, I want to show that the heterosexual, cisgender love-couple can be a site of violence and that its pursuit can be masochistic in ways we have tried to present as healthy and innately fulfilling.”
The team here at AUREA was really impressed to see the work and dedication that you, our community members, and all the allos who contributed, put into this event! Our future really is only going to get bigger and brighter. We hope you had a happy ASAW <3